


Memoranda

by R00bs_Teacup



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Other, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 13:59:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4394606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R00bs_Teacup/pseuds/R00bs_Teacup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here's my take on how the story continues. Merlin moves through time at his own pace. He has a cat. He's probably known as the village wierdo, but people trust him with their kids. He walks, he walks the earth and connects with Albion and his cat gets him into trouble by finding someone lying unconscious in the grass</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memoranda

Merlin hangs up his coat when he gets home and puts the kettle on. It’s pretty dark out now, so he shuffles about turning lights on. He puts the heating on, too, and kneels to light a fire. He winces as both his knees make creaking noises, and pads the floor a little with a breath of a spell. He doesn’t bother with much magic, except for things like this. He builds the fire and lights it with matches, unsure these days which is easier, magic or matches. It takes him two tries to get off the floor. 

The cat flap goes at the same time as the kettle and Merlin detours to get a tin of catfood for Ginger, stroking her damp fur when she comes to mew at him. He gave up a lot of aspects of human contact a long time ago, wearying of people’s thoughts and feelings, their immaturity and lack of wisdom, tiring of their aging and leaving, their moving on. He does have friends, but he prefers animals most of the time now. He picks up strays when he travels the long distance to London. 

He remembers with a smile, as he scoops out jellied meat, how it used to take weeks, walking on his own two legs, to get that distance. Then travel by carriage became the thing and he used to ride with a party of young, bright things, enjoying their laughter and the way one of them used to look at him. Even by carriage it took a day or two. And now, just a few hours on the bus and he calls it a long journey. Just shows how one gets used to things. 

“Well, Ginger, just us tonight, I think,” Merlin says, making himself a cup of tea and checking his watch. 

He sits at the table and considers. He could go on the internet, he’s kept up to date with changes and, after living through so many, he’s good at adapting and learning. He knows so much now that he’s pretty sure he could, with a bit of research, cure most things and invent time travel and a space rocket that would take humanity far beyond the stars. But, at the same time, he knows that time travel is impossible (he tried, for a while, back in the Dark Ages, thinking that it would be fun), and he knows that to cure illness isn’t always as easy in practice as theory (also from experience. He killed as many people as he cured, during the Bubonic plague years, and when he attempted to create a cure for Ebola, he accidentally infected himself). The rocket he could build, though. It would have to be a sort of moving, sustainable, eco-system and it would be people’s children’s children’s children who actually got ‘beyond the stars’, but he might try it sometime. 

Merlin’s still lost in thoughts about invention when the boy slips into the kitchen. Merlin doesn’t bother to react, he just goes on thinking for a bit until the boy clears his throat. Then Merlin flicks a switch from ‘old as time’ to ‘just old, harmless Mr Rogers up the road’. He settles a bit into his bones and tries to look like the aches he ought to feel all the time aren’t assuaged a huge amount by magic he can’t stop from trying to help him out. 

“Hello, Thomas,” Merlin says, smiling at the boy and waving a hand to invite him in. 

“Hullo, Lindon. Mum said I might come up for dinner, if you’d have me.” 

Thomas gets up onto a chair at the table and grins at Merlin expectantly, as if he knows (and his mother knows) perfectly well that Merlin will always have him. Merlin likes feeding people, and he likes cooking, and he likes children. The kind of friendships children build are transitory, so it doesn’t hurt when the inevitable leaving happens, or not so much. It’s all part of the relationship. Merlin gets up and shuffles over to the cupboard to see what he has in. 

He doesn’t really eat much, when he’s on his own. Living as long as he has, the interminable boredom of eat, sleep, poop, repeat gets so boring you’d shoot yourself if you didn’t come up with alternatives, so Merlin eats now and then and his body has adapted to sustaining itself with whatever he gives it. 

“How about… a proper English Sunday roast?” Merlin asks. 

“Have you been off in France again, sir?” Thomas asks. 

“Perhaps. Or perhaps it was Argentina this time.” 

Thomas knows that Merlin only makes ‘proper English’ anything after being away for long periods of time. Also, Ginger usually goes down to Thomas’s house when Merlin stops feeding her, because she’s too lazy to catch her own food. Merlin knows she can, because he taught her to be self-sufficient. He doesn’t mind, though. Thomas likes feeding her, and there’s a certain ingenuity to the solution. 

Thomas knows how to be quiet, which Merlin likes. He pulls out a book while Merlin cooks. Amal, who also calls round now and then, always plays with Ginger and talks to her, if Merlin stops paying attention. Paula just babbles on to Merlin, whether he’s listening or not. Merlin likes them all, in their own ways, but he has to admit that Thomas’s quiet is something that puts him above the others. 

Two days later Merlin returns to the house again after walking the land to remind himself of the feel of Albion, and finds no Ginger. Usually Ginger comes to greet him when he returns, but after four hours she still hasn’t returned. Merlin sighs and wonders if she, too, has gone to another life. He sits on the sofa for a while, finding himself more in time than he’s been for a while and not liking it. 

He gets up and pulls on his outdoor things again and leaves with house, banging the door shut on the silence and emptiness. He walks absently, not considering his path or destination. He pushes his hands deep into his pockets and tucks his chin into his collar and scarf and just walks. His legs are old and the bones creak sometimes, but having magic is good for more than one thing in this world, and he keeps himself more or less healthy. His body works, mostly. It’s a good body. He pats his stomach through his coat in thanks for it holding out so long. 

He hitches a lift with a lorry for a few miles, for some company, and listens to the man talk about art therapy, South Africa, his sister. It’s nice, to be reminded of human beings and their small lives and concerns. He likes the cadence of the man’s voice, the accent, the sunshine it reminds him of. He admits to having been all across Africa and that sets the guy off on an enthusiastic retelling of his own back-packing adventure. Merlin smiles, deciding not to tell the guy just what he means by ‘all over’. By this time he’s covered every inch of the planet, mostly more than once, on his feet, in cars, on motorbikes, via boat and train and place. 

He climbs out of the cab, after a bit, and walks a bit further before realising where he’s come. And Ginger’s there, bounding through the grass to him, eyes wilder than they have been since she was a small kitten. He’s come in a big circle, or a spiral, and here he is. At the centre of it all. He sighs and bends to lift the cat into his arms. 

“What have we come here for, hmm? Nothing here anymore, kit.” 

Ginger wriggles and pads off, tail high, stalking something. Merlin follows her, because he might not speak ‘cat’ but he knows how to read his pets. He closes his eyes and uses magic, because this place makes his body ache with tiredness. Not that he really feels grief anymore. He’s had many lovers since him, met many princes, supported and guided many young men, his world centres on other things, other pivots. He’s had other friends. It’s not him who makes his body ache like this, it’s not his emotion that saps his strength. 

It comes as a surprise when he trips over something. Merlin hasn’t tripped over anything for hundreds and hundreds of years. He outgrew his clumsiness after a few centuries, his body becoming too familiar to do anything without his knowledge. He opens his eyes and looks down, and finds a young man lying at his feet. 

“Huh. Ginger, what have you got us into now?” 

Merlin’s pets always seem to have a kind of magical ability of finding them trouble. Merlin supposes it’s from being brought up by him, but he always blames them anyway. He bends to check the man’s pulse and finds it strong. He tries to wake him, then checks him over to see if he should call emergency services. Ginger licks the man’s face, which Merlin knows is unpleasant but elicits no response. 

“Well, kit. The way I see it, I probably know enough by now that my suspicion (and the indication from my magic) that there’s nothing wrong with this man is something I should pay attention to. I will take him home.” 

Merlin waves his hand and lifts the man as if on a stretcher. Ginger jumps up to sit on the man’s chest and rides all the way home, looking like she’s caught a pheasant for herself for dinner. There’s something about her smugness, along with Merlin’s unwillingness to call nine-nine-nine that sets off a small ping in his mind, but he shrugs it off and puts the man to sleep on the sofa, sitting up with him in the armchair by the fire, reading his way through Sarah Waters’ back-catalogue. 

It’s about a week before the man wakes. Merlin reads slowly to pass the time, drowsing his way through so he doesn’t get bored sitting there, doesn’t get hungry. It’s not exactly slowing down time, because there’s no magic involved and time is just a concept and doesn’t really exist (one of the problems with time travel, incidentally), but that’s more or less what he does. Siddhartha called a similar sort of thing meditation, so Merlin calls it conscious meditation. Or slowing down time. 

When he does finally wake, Merlin takes a moment to react. He watches the man sit up, absently noting what he hadn’t really noticed before: namely, that the guy is naked as the day he was born. The man notices that immediately and pulls the blanket up to his chin, staring around, wide eyed. He grins when he spots Merlin, though, and cocks his head to one side, eyes narrowed a little. 

“You old bastard,” he says eventually, “I knew I recognised your eyes. Hullo.” 

Merlin hadn’t really been expecting that. He’s lived a long time and men have said stranger things on waking up from a long sleep. Merlin’s lived through hundreds of wars, famines, tragedies. He’s heard many things. It’s not the words that are surprising, but the tone. It’s been a long, long, long time since he bothered with people enough to hear that tone in someone’s voice. 

“It’s been a while, I know. I suppose you’ve forgotten what I look like,” the man says, forgetting about the blanket and letting it fall. 

“I have known many people,” Merlin says, “you seem… familiar. I would suspect you of being Emmet, but Emmet died many, many years ago.” 

Merlin smiles, remembering the young man at Cambridge. Merlin had really enjoyed teaching him. That had been so, so long ago, now. Late seventeen hundreds, maybe. He’d lived a good life with Emmet, and Emmet had known so much. Had done so much and been so much. His body will always be familiar, even if centuries passed. 

“Not Emmet. I died long before him, long before the others, too.” 

“You could just tell me your name,” Merlin snaps. 

He has patience coming out of his ears, but something about this man rubs him the wrong way and he can’t be bothered to utelise it. He stretches out in his chair and observes the man as he laughs. 

“I could, but where would the fun be in that? Alright. My name is Arthur Pendragon, Merlin.” 

“Lindon,” Merlin corrects, automatically, so used to correcting himself that the rest of it doesn’t register. 

When it does, when his brain catches up with his ears, Merlin gapes for a while, then examines and pokes at the man, then goes to get the stack of pictures he drew of Arthur. They’re mostly crumbled away, after this long. He spread the few fragments of fragile paper that are left out on the floor and pieces together an image, compares it to the man lounging on the sofa. 

“You look nothing like him,” Merlin says. 

“It’s been a long time. Not even your memory is infallible. I do like that you gave me brown eyes. And, wow, that is quite a large-“ 

“If you say it you will sound ridiculous.” 

“Manhood is ridiculous, now?” 

“Yes.” 

“What do people call it, then?” 

“Penis.” 

Arthur stares at him. Merlin supposes it is Arthur. It certainly feels kind of like Merlin remembers him feeling. Though, without the intense emotion. 

“How vulgar! How many years have passed?” Arthur says, eventually. 

“Many,” Merlin says, “I lost count, a while ago. This is the year twenty-fifteen, so at least two-thousand and fifteen years, and before that was… I dunno. Maybe three thousand? I forget.” 

“You lived it all?” Arthur asks. 

“I was a tree, for a bit. That was… strange. I had an affinity to growing things for a long time that was… awkward. And there was a space when I gave hibernating a go. I woke up when I was hungry, though. Only a few years, that. And I was buried alive for a bit, checked out for that bit. Someone thought I was dead, nothing malignant. Just an accident. That nice Mr Edgar Allen Poe found me soon after that and I believe I accidentally…” 

“Mr who?” Arthur asks. 

Meriln goes to get the book for him and leaves him to read it, going out to get wood for the fire and then forgetting himself and walking out, forgetting further and further until he’s one with Albion. At which point the land gives his magic a kick and sends him back to Arthur with his tail between his legs. 

“Sorry,” Merlin says, shutting the door, “I forgot that I was supposed to be a normal human again. I go where a whim takes me.” 

Arthur’s sat at the kitchen table, with a pile of newspapers spread out around him. The tottering stack in the recycling outside suggests that this has been going on a while. 

“This is a strange place,” Arthur says, conversationally, “I met a boy called Thomas, by the way, he tried to fight me with a rake. I told him I was a friend feeding Ginger. He seemed to believe me. He showed me how to make…” 

Arthur trails off and frowns, mouthing something, and then draws a picture with a ballpoint across a cross-word and passes it over. 

“Pasta,” Merlin says. 

“Yes. I found some lists and ways to cook on pieces of paper on your shelf and through that discovered these fliers. Newspapers.” 

“I’ll show you internet,” Merlin says, “you’ll like it.” 

“The milkman told me about that,” Arthur says, frowning, “she said there was ‘porn’ on there. I looked it up in the ‘dictionary’ and I don’t think I will like that.” 

“I didn’t know we had a milkman,” Merlin says, looking in the fridge for bacon, “do you want a fry up?” 

“Fry up,” Arthur says, “I read the dictionary, too, so… bacon. Yes. I would like a… fry up.” 

“How long was I gone?” 

“About two months, I think. I didn’t measure. I read Mr Edgar Allen Poe, and then I got bored and read some of the other books. I read one where two men fell in love, and no one minded a bit!” 

“People in Camelot fell in love. I mean, men did.” 

“No. Men in Camelot had intercourse. Had… sex. They… fucked.” 

“I’m sure some of them-“ 

“Yes, yes, I’m sure too. But we thought of it as companionship, not… not… men can marry one another now!” 

“Isn’t it progressive?” 

“I never made you feel as if the way you were was wrong,” Arthur says, catching the bitterness in Merlin’s voice. 

“That wasn’t directed at you,” Merlin admits, “Camelot was liberal compared to… there are still places where anyone not straight or cis are killed, and some places where they’re killed legally.” 

“Cis?” 

“Cis-gendered.” 

“Ah. Yes. Gender. I’ve read a bit about that. Is it true that I am only a man because I think I am, and not because of my ma- my penis?” 

“Yup.” 

“So… I can be a woman, if I’d like to be one?” 

“If you want to be, I guess.” 

Merlin fries the bacon and eggs while Arthur thinks over that. Arthur eats through an entire packet of bacon before sitting back from the table. 

“Nope. I am definitely a man. I think Morgana was, too, though. I read about someone who killed themselves because… poor Morgana.” 

Merlin, who hasn’t thought about Morgana in so long that he can barely put a face to a name (and going by Arthur’s alabaster rather than olive skin, blue rather than brown eyes and height, the face is probably wrong), shrugs and puts the plates in the sink. 

“You don’t use magic for much,” Arthur observes. 

“Not the kind you know,” Merlin agrees. 

They have silence for a while, Arthur reading up on more and introducing himself to the internet and frowning a lot. He cries, for almost two days, learning about history. Merlin watches Arthur getting paler and paler as he reads about the things people have done to each other. 

“I thought our time would be barabaric in comparison, when I was sent back,” Arthur says, leaning in the doorway of the bedroom, “but nothing changes.” 

“No, not really.” 

“Why am I here? There’s nothing I can do about Ebola, or war, or… I was to be sent back for a great battle, I was to lead an army, as a knight. Not…” 

“I think the world gave up on a big battle where the moment of greatest need appears. There have been too many moments. The world is bigger than Albion ever knew. As far as a land is conscious. I suppose it would be more accurate to talk about magical beings. The priestesses, the dragons, the gods and goddesses. They withdrew from the world so long ago. I thought you’d never return, because there’s… there is no ‘greatest need’. The world always needs things.” 

“I left my knights there, sleeping. Wherever ‘there’ is.” 

“Maybe they’re better off there.” 

“The living has made you cynical and bitter. It has taken your humanity and your love.” 

Arthur doesn’t sound upset, there’s no judgement or pity, simply an observation. It’s true, so Merlin just shrugs. 

“I loved for a long time. It’s a painful thing to do.” 

“Yes, I know,” Arthur says, “I’ve loved you for thousands and thousands of years, alone under a hill, in freezing armour.” 

“You were asleep.” 

“I was healing. I was dreaming. I was hibernating.” 

“You were conscious?” 

“I don’t know. All I know is I’ve loved you, for a very, very long time.” 

“What about Gwen?” 

“Her, too. And Morgana. And Leon, Lance, Gwaine, Percival, Elyan. Mithian. My father, my mother. Love has many faces.” 

“Oh. I am your friend.” 

“You are. I told you a long time ago I could be nothing more to you.” 

“You did.” 

Merlin holds up the covers and Arthur comes to sit in bed with him. 

“I suppose we just, live, now?” Arthur asks.

**Author's Note:**

> This is something that's just been slowly germinating. I might continue. It's kind of the beginning of many many little stories that have been floating around my head, so there may be more. We'll see


End file.
